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    • Sat Sep 13th 15:24 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      An Optimist Looks at the Market
      Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.

      1. Gas and oil prices are lower BECAUSE economies across the globe are slowing.

      2. The GDP growth number is entirely fictitious. If one applies a realistic deflator (5%? 12%) instead of a ridiculous 1.3% inflation rate, then economic growth is negative--and has been for over a year.

      3. The dollar is strengthening against the currencies of nations that are following us into recession.

      4. The once in a lifetime opportunities are probably on the short side. Citibank and GE will survive in at best a diminished form. Microsoft is a plausible investment, but it faces many real risks.

      5. Housing needs to drop another 15% before it reaches the historical average level of affordability. And it will probably overshoot on the downside. An average is not a floor.

      5.
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    • Thu Aug 14th 17:30 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      A Continued Short Case for Automobile Finance Companies
      The one thing that holds me back from shorting Americredit is that Leucadia National owns a massive stake in it. Leucadia must be seeing something I don't.
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    • Thu Aug 14th 17:04 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      A Short Update on My Four Short Ideas
      I have the same question User 5087 does. How can one successfully borrow stock in these companies? During the July rally, I managed to borrow a bit more DSL, but only by paying a steep negative rebate. Now I find that DSL, FED, BKUNA, and CORS are all impossible to borrow.
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    • Thu Jul 24th 17:18 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      US Banks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
      I must respectfully disagree. Readers who want something short and shallow can easily find it elsewhere.
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    • Thu Jul 24th 17:02 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      News Flash: Major Market Turns Aren't Announced In Advance
      At the Value Investors Congress last November, I heard Tom Brown pounding the table for Marblehead and Rich Pzena saying Freddie Mac was the best value he had seen in his entire investing career. At the time, I had enough respect for both men to refrain from shorting those stocks. Oh well. It is a good thing that I have been betting against Downey, Wachovia, BankUnited, MBIA, Ambac, WaMu, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman.

      Tom knows an enormous amount about banks, and he was the top banking analyst on the street for seven years, if I am not mistaken. But he is clearly not objective in his assessment of this particular industry and the substantial risks it still faces.

      There is also something deeply wrong with the culture of American banking. The incentive systems all revolve around volume rather than credit quality. At Anglo Irish Bank, one of the best-run banks in the world, you could get fired for bringing the central credit committee several risky loan proposals. At the typical large American bank, you might well get fired for trying to derail an unsound but temporarily lucrative corporate loan. A friend of mine had this experience at Citibank. He was saved only by a last-minute downgrade of the credit rating of the potential borrower. But the bankers he was supporting never forgave him. They didn't give a hoot whether the loan defaulted somewhere down the road. All they cared about was meeting their quotas.

      It is possible that an investor might make money on some banks in the next three years. But why try to catch the falling knives and tomahawks when there are so many great companies, financial and otherwise, that don't have trillions of dollars of Level III capital and off-balance-sheet hanky panky? In the financial sector, I would point to Markel, Interactive Brokers, and CME, to name just a few. All three of those companies have managements that are not just prudent and ethical but visionary.
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    • Thu Jul 24th 14:12 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      There's Been Major Deflation for Some Products
      You are exactly right, Lansingman. This superficial article relies on the ridiculous "hedonic adjustments" used in CPI calculations. It is true that the worst inflation is in services (healthcare and higher education, for example) and not in products. But the deflation numbers cited above are useless without an explanation of the (dubious) assumptions behind the hedonic adjustments for the perceived superior utility of today's products. If you want to see some serious discussion of deflation, which is now a real problem, check out the discussions at Minyanville and Mish Shedlock's globaleconomicanalysis...
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    • Wed Jul 9th 17:17 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Consensus Subprime Mortgage Loss Estimates: Mathematically Impossible?
      BBZZ24 makes a good point. With leverage of 20x or more on their balance sheets, many banks and investment banks would be destroyed by even a 5% reduction in total assets.

      Brown knows an enormous amount about banking, but his relentless cheerleading for the industry has cost him and his investors a great deal of money. And I suspect his rigid optimism will CONTINUE to cost him money.
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    • Tue Apr 22nd 19:15 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Dendreon: The FDA's Commissioner Doth Protest Too Much!
      I agree that Pazdur has behaved in a criminally negligent and irrational manner, with Provenge and many other therapies. Unfortunately, though, the conflict of interest question may be a bit of a red herring. Most active researchers will have multiple corporate affiliations. There will be very few without any conflicts of interest. The conflicts of interest listed above (stock ownership, consulting relationships, funding for research) are fairly visible, but there are also many other less visible conflicts of interest, allegiances, etc. Can someone who spent much of his life or her doing research on chemotherapy offer an unbiased opinion about a cancer vaccine? It will depend on the individual. But you can't evaluate cancer vaccines without involving oncologists. The only solution is to create a culture of rational debate at the FDA, and to severely discourage the making of bad, self-interested arguments.
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    • Tue Apr 15th 16:25 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Biotech Stocks: Sector Outlook and Top Picks
      ZymoGenetics is certainly undervalued right now. The total market cap is less than the value of their approved drug, Recothrom, much less their pipeline. Their team has now developed seven approved drugs. If you think about the total number of new drugs approved in a given year, seven drugs is a pretty impressive number.

      BioMarin is also an excellent company, but as far as I can tell it is not quite as grossly undervalued as ZymoGenetics.
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    • Sat Oct 27th 21:30 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Countrywide Surges on Expected Return to Profitability in Q4
      Why shouldn't we trust the management of CFC? After all, haven't they given excellent earnings guidance over the past year? And surely there couldn't be any more bad debt lurking in their balance sheet? Angelo and the tooth fairy will protect the suckers currently buying the stock, won't they?
      View article »
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